Production company says expos still packed

Starfish Junction Productions, a marketing and event production company, is best known for organizing events in the coffee/tea and beer industries. But the Bay Shore-based business is branching out into other niches, having launched a green living event last year, planning a divorce expo and possibly holding a potato festival this year.

Andy Calimano and Ed Duhon started Starfish Junction in the summer of 2005 with a vision of creating events for the whole family. The company made some early mistakes, but learned from them.

For instance, an Italian festival, planned for Halloween weekend, was a flop. “We realized two things: never plan an event for Halloween weekend unless it’s a Halloween event,” Calimano said. “And we only marketed it to Italian people. If we had marketed it to a broader audience, it probably would have been more successful.”

The company’s first big hit was its Coffee & Tea Festival, which in its fourth year has grown to attract 45 exhibitors and 3,000 attendees. It is held each April at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Manhattan.

Starfish Junction also hosts about a dozen beer festivals throughout the year, in the New York and Philadelphia areas. For instance, the Spring Craft Beer Festival, which is held the fourth weekend in March at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, grew to draw 3,000 visitors and 65 exhibitors in 2009, its third year.According to Calimano, events are held the same weekend every year, so people can “just put them on their calendars.”

The Green Living Expo, launched in 2008, is held in April at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood. Although attendance was off for the second annual event, due to warm, sunny weather, Calimano said, a second Green Living Expo, with an emphasis on green gifts, will be added to the calendar this November
Calimano has not noticed a negative impact on attendance from the recession. “The events are reasonably priced, and they’re close to home,” he said. “Beer events are under $75 and coffee and tea events are under $20.”
Besides samples, entertainment and programming are key ingredients at each event. For instance, the Coffee & Tea Festival has featured an exhibitor that makes candles out of tea, another which paints with espresso, a traditional Korean tea ceremony and demonstrations about cooking with coffee and tea and how professionals select coffee beans. “We plan activities that get attendees involved and allow them to learn something new about the industry,” Calimano said.

Each event features at least one nonprofit organization as an exhibitor. “We decided we wanted to do this from the beginning, to give back to the community,” Calimano said.

In addition to promoting its events, Starfish Junction promotes its exhibitors year-round through dedicated event Web sites, e-newsletters and e-mailings. For instance, it publishes content-rich Coffee & Tea and Green Living newsletters once a month and e-mails calendar listings of beer tastings and other beer-related events twice monhtly.

Starfish Junction was approached this year by a North Fork potato farmer with the idea to launch an annual potato festival, which Calimano said is under consideration. The company was also approached by a divorce attorney about starting a divorce expo. “We first had to think about what a divorce expo would be,” Calimano said. “The more research we did, we realized it would be helpful to have one place where people could go to get information at different stages, whether contemplating or starting a divorce or starting over after a divorce.” Starfish Junction is teaming up with the Nassau County law firm Mejias Milgrim & Alvarado on the event, which is planned for June 25 at the Harbor Links Golf Course in Port Washington.

Prior to the Starfish Junction launch, Calimano was managing partner for Integrated Direct, a Mineola-based direct and interactive marketing agency. In 2004, he was involved in the production of a beer festival in New York.

He met Duhon at the office of a mutual client. Duhon had retired as president of Tapeswitch Corp., a Farmingdale-based manufacturer, and had started his own consulting firm. Within a month of their initial meeting, Calimano and Duhon decided to start Starfish Junction together.

The company has four employees, plus the two partners, and often has two or three interns at a time, who work for school credit and hands-on experience. And the company always has volunteers for its beer and coffee-and-tea events, who exchange their time for free admission and samples.